Page 94 of Dirty Reads

I opened the door and looked inside while he was walking away. The red leather interior was a great compliment to the white exterior. Similar to the Ferrari, it had paddle shifters and no clutch pedal. My guess was that it would be pretty fun to drive.

I realized I loved Jess, and I wanted her to know how I felt about her. Buying her flowers, a card, or some other dumb shit just seemed stupid. She had a shitty car, a crappy job, and only $50 extra bucks a week, so devised a little plan to resolve her woes and help me at the same time. The first part of the plan involved getting her a car.

The way she enjoyed the day we ran from the cops told me a performance model would make her happier than anything else.

“Here you go.” He pressed the button, unlocked the doors, and handed me the keys.

I opened the door. He did the same. “I don’t need a chauffeur,” I said.

“Policy.”

I started the car, listened to the drone of the exhaust, and grinned. It sounded healthy. We both secured our seatbelts and I pulled out of the lot and onto the street.

“If you take this back to 183, you can go down to…”

“I’m not going to 183, I’m going to go up McNeil to Parmer,” I said.

He scowled. “We have a preferred route.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? A preferred route? I’m the one buying this motherfucker, I’ll drive it where the fuck I want.”

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made a call. “We’re taking an alternate route. McNeil to Parmer.”

“What the fuck? You had to call that in?”

He shrugged. “It’s policy.”

I pulled up to the traffic light and stopped as it switched to yellow. A new Dodge Challenger R/T pulled to the light beside me. Unlike the BMW M4, the Dodge’s exhaust rumbled, the car shook, and it was obviously a performance car.

I glanced at the driver of the Dodge. He met my gaze. I nodded toward the light. He nodded in response.

“Don’t you dare…”

The light turned green, and I stomped the gas.

The car lunged forward and the engine revved, leaving the Dodge a few feet behind. The tachometer quickly rose to the 7,500 rpm redline, and I tapped the paddle shifter.

The Dodge slowly crept to my side.

Once again, the redline, and another quick shift.

The salesman screamed like a little girl as the BMW climbed to 100 miles an hour. “You can’t do this…”

“Shut up. I am doing it.”

The redline again, another gear, and we shot onto the highway at 125 miles an hour. The Dodge was twenty feet behind us.

I maneuvered around the 70 mile-an-hour traffic, swerving in and out of lanes. The car quickly reached 155 miles an hour, at which point it stopped increasing speed like it had hit a brick wall.

I looked in the rearview mirror. The Dodge was nowhere in sight. “What the fuck? This thing hit a wall at 155?”

He fought to catch his breath as I slowed down to 80. “The U.S. models are electronically limited.”

“Can you remove it?” I asked.

He inhaled a deep breath. “What?”

“The fucking limiter?”

“We can, but it’ll cost you.”

“The girl I’m buying this for will want it removed. If you can remove it, I’ll take it.”

He coughed out a laugh. “This car isn’t a car for a girl.”

“Well. This isn’t a typical girl,” I said.

“She better not be,” he said. “Not with this.”

“She’s not,” I assured him. “Not even close.”